New York college students want the Thomas Jefferson statue removed

Students protest to get the statue of Thomas Jefferson removed from the campus premise, claiming he was a racist.

New York's Hofstra University students are protesting to have the statue of Thomas Jefferson removed claiming that Jefferson once used to own slaves and was one of the people who believed that 'black people were inherently inferior to whites.'

According to Time, a petition was started at Change.org by student Ja'loni Owens demanding that administrators of the university on Long Island remove the statue and stop it from being displayed on the campus.

Owens along with her group of student activists are even planning to initiate protests in front of the famous statue.

The source informed that Jefferson, who famously wrote that 'all men are created equal,' owned more than 600 slaves over the course of life.

He also believed that black and white people could not live together in peace because blacks were racially inferior.

There has been no confirmation on what would be the reaction of the college administration on the issue.

Meanwhile, it was reported that the administrators from Hofstra stated that they would be looking forward to continuing a 'civil exchange of ideas and perspectives' on the matter to reach a reasonable and justifiable conclusion.

Several social media users reacted to the surprising demands from the students, and not all of them viewed the movement in the positive light.

A Facebook user, Janet Ford, voiced that the students should rather focus on their education rather than trying to change the history.

Similarly, Facebook user Paula Bowman was also concerned about young people trying to change the history.

Clearly, these social media users believed that Jefferson's statue was an important part of the history that the students were trying to remove.